This chapter contains sections titled: Acosta, José de (1539–1600) Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1810–84) Bello, Andrés (1781–1865) Bilbao, Francisco (1823–65) Bolkvar, Simón (1783–1830) Casas, Bartolomé de las (1484–1566) Caso, Antonio (1883–1946) Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la (1651–95) da Costa, Newton Carneiro Affonso (b. 1929) Dussel, Enrique (b. 1934) Frondizi, Risieri (1910–83) Gaos, José (1900–69) González Prada, Manuel (1848–1918) Gracia, Jorge J. E. (b. 1942) Haya de la Torre, Victor Raúl (1895–1979) Hostos, Eugenio Marka de (1839–1903) Ingenieros, José (1877–1925) Korn, Alejandro (...) (1860–1936) Lastarria, José Victorino (1817–88) Lemos, Miguel (1854–1917) Mariátegui, José Carlos (1895–1930) Martk, José (1853–95) Méndez Sierra, Justo (1848–1912) Mora, José Maria Luis (1794–1850) Miró Quesada, Francisco (b. 1918) Rabossi, Eduardo (1930–2005) Ramos, Samuel (1897–1959) Rodó, José Enrique (1872–1917) Romero, Francisco (1891–1962) Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1499–1590) Salazar Bondy, Augusto (1925–74) Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1811–88) Ofelia Schutte (b. 1945) Sepslveda, Juan Ginés de (ca. 1494–1573) Torretti, Roberto (b. 1930) Vasconcelos, José (1882–1959) Vaz Ferreira, Carlos (1872–1958) Villoro, Luis (b. 1922) Vitoria, Francisco de (ca. 1483–1546) Zea Aguilar, Leopoldo (1912–2004) Acknowledgment Further Reading. (shrink)

Early in the 1930s, a number of French Catholic and secular philosophers debated the question of the meaning, even the very possibility, of Christian philosophy. Positions articulated during these debates provided intellectual background to debates about nature and grace, and the interaction of philosophy and theology that informed theological debate before and during the Second Vatican Council. These questions continue to be raised in theological debate today. -/- This selection of previously untranslated documents from the French debates about Christian philosophy (...) provides a long-needed complement to available English-language literature on the subject. These documents show that the debates were highly complex, involved multiple sides, and prompted development of certain participants' positions. Four of Maurice Blondel's contributions are included, as are selections by Gabriel Marcel, Etienne Gilson, Fernand Van Steenberghen, among others. A detailed historical introduction provides much-needed background to these intertwined debates. -/- The editor's thematic outline of seventeen different participants' positions and engagements includes but also goes beyond the selections translated in the volume. It provides a full and balanced treatment of the numerous participants, and sets the complex intellectual context for understanding the positions, issues, and main personalities of the debate. A chronological bibliography of literature comprising and commenting on the debates and their issues is also included and will serve as an invaluable aid to further scholarship. (shrink)

This thematic bibliography provides a narrative account of the most important literature comprising, and about, the 1930s debates about Christian carried out by Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Maurice Blondel, Emile Brehier, Gabriel Marcel, and many others. It functions as a companion piece to my book Reason Fulfilled By Revelation: The 1930s Christian Philosophy Debates In France.

This book chapter represents one of the engagements between Catholic and Wesleyan philosophers at the 2008 Wesleyan Philosophy Society. The issue of what precisely "Wesleyan philosophy" would mean and comprise can be usefully illuminated by comparison with the positions and issues that were raised and discussed by Catholic scholars during the 1930s Christian philosophy debates in France, which included Etienne Gilson, Maurice Blondel, Jacques Maritain, and Gabriel Marcel. We also discuss how the thought on a contemporary Catholic philosopher Adriaan (...) Peperzack, specifically on affectivity, can be brought into comparison with that important theme in Wesleyan philosophy. (shrink)

The Four ages contains a brief explicit discussion of the issue of Christian philosophy, referencing the Middle Ages and the 1930s French debates about Christian philosophy. Closer attention to the debates reveals a plurality of positions rather than unanimous agreement on Christian philosophy, indicating that the quite complex issues were not resolved. In this review article, I contest Deely’s interpretation of Maritian’s position, provide an exegesis of Maritain’s position, argue that Deely’s explicit position is identifiable as very close to Neo-Scholastic (...) opponents of Christian philosophy during the debates, and briefly discuss Gilson’s and Blondel’s criticisms of such positions articulated during the 1930s debates. I also indicate that despite his opposition to Christian philosophy, Deely shares several key insights with its proponents, and I end by suggesting but not developing a few ways Deely’s semiotic approach could bear additional fruit for postmodern Christian philosophy’s ongoing projects of self-understanding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity by Roberto Di CeglieGregory StaceyDI CEGLIE, Roberto. Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity. New York: Routledge, 2022. x + 196 pp. Cloth, $160.00Suppose one wishes to argue that Christian faith (that is, supernatural belief in propositions insofar as they are divinely revealed) is compatible with the proper exercise of reason (that is, forming beliefs through natural cognitive processes). Two strategies suggest themselves. (...) First, one could argue that faith is itself a natural cognitive process or else meets criteria by which natural beliefs are considered rational or appropriate. Alternatively, one might contend that faith can meet its own, independent criteria for rationality or propriety. Thomas Aquinas, whose natural theology and discussion of public evidence that God has revealed himself in Christ are famously robust, may appear to be an exponent of the former strategy. Yet in this volume, Roberto Di Ceglie advances a reading of Thomas that illustrates how faith can support rational enquiry, while remaining independent of it. On this view, faith is "caused mainly by God" and is therefore "at least partly unresponsive to rational criteria."Part 1 begins Di Ceglie's case obliquely, by criticizing both efforts to argue (following Gilson and Maritain) that philosophy can be influenced by Christian faith and recent attempts to explain Aquinas's account of faith and reason. Reviewing the work of commentators including Anthony Kenny, Richard Swinburne, and Eleonore Stump, the author objects that many philosophers hold that for Thomas, faith is primarily a form of propositional belief that should be evaluated for propriety in the same way as natural beliefs. He alleges that this understanding of faith is inherited from Locke, who endorsed "methodological naturalism": the view that appropriate "religious belief can only be taken as the outcome, if any, of a rational exploration of our experience." While this material usefully outlines views which Di Ceglie means to oppose, readers unfamiliar with scholarship on Aquinas and Locke may find these initial chapters difficult to follow.The argument becomes easier to follow in part 2, which provides Di Ceglie's own interpretation of Aquinas. The key third chapter explores Aquinas's definition of faith as "an act of the intellect assenting to the Divine Truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God" (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9). It demonstrates that while for Aquinas faith involves firm propositional belief, its certitude derives not from believers' assessment of signs that God has revealed the articles of faith but from their free choice—itself a gift of grace—to embrace those articles. More precisely, in cases of "formed" faith, this choice is motivated by supernatural love for God (charity). Charity's role in Aquinas's religious epistemology is [End Page 547] highlighted in two subsequent chapters. Inter alia, Di Ceglie charges that faith is meritorious principally due to its grounds in charity rather than because the articles of faith are not evidently true. He further claims that Aquinas understood "unformed" faith as merely "faith commonly so called"—that is, natural belief in propositions because one judges that they are testified to by a competent authority. Accordingly, unformed faith lacks perfect confidence because it is merely based on probabilistic evidence that God has revealed the articles of faith, rather than on a strong, loving will to trust God. More generally, the certitude of one's faith is proportionate to the perfection of one's charity.Having developed a reading of Aquinas's religious epistemology that stresses the distinction between faith and reason, in part 3 Di Ceglie considers their positive relationship. First, he attempts to reconcile the apparently opposing views that Aquinas's philosophy is purely an exercise of natural reason, and that his philosophical work was influenced by his Christian faith. Broadly, the charity that grounds formed faith also inspires and enhances rational investigation, although philosophical arguments cannot presume faith's truth. Believers with formed faith, however, should reject positions that contradict faith and seek to revise their philosophical reasoning accordingly. The final chapter argues that Christian faith affords a better position from which to engage in rational reflection than atheism or agnosticism. Among other advantages, faith... (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The mass extinction visited upon us by capitalism involves many kinds of devastation. Here I clarify the grounds for assessing the most obvious of these harms, i.e., decimation of species diversity. The thesis that variety among species has intrinsic value motivates, and in turn follows from, the “variable value view” (VVV) of abundance within any given species. In contrast, standard axiologies have no place for the intrinsic value of species diversity. I show that the VVV provides a better justification than (...) the latter do, of the way in which a widely-used empirical indicator summarizes the overall state of life on Earth. These considerations favor ecocentric value theory – which ascribes intrinsic value to properties of ecological wholes, like species diversity, that do not supervene on the well-being of their constituent organisms – over its main competitors. I conclude by widening the focus from wild nature alone to the biosphere comprising both wilderness and the domesticated realm. This broadened perspective helps to link the science and ethics of biodiversity with the political struggle to extract ourselves from the moral abyss of mass extinction. (shrink)

A half-billion years ago, a few species of single-celled protozoa stumbled irreversibly from loose social interaction into a tight, specialized interdependence. They became multi-celled metazoa, and human beings are one sort. Metazoa greatly transcend their constituent cells in lifetime, abilities, experiences and even materials (like bone). New kind of beings emerged out of the interactions of the old.

A careful reading of the initial posing of the issue to be debated with Protagoras and of its subsequent restatement when the debate resumes after a break will show that Socrates employs three distinct formulae, only the first of which answers at all closely to the term "Unity of the Virtues" which has been commonly used in the scholarly literature as a label for the position which Socrates upholds in the debate. The other two formulae, perfectly distinguishable from the first, (...) I shall call the "Similarity" and "Biconditionality" Theses. I shall discuss the three Theses seriatim. But let me emphasize from the start that they are not treated in the text as logically disjoint tenets, but as successive moments in the elucidation of a single doctrine. That is how Protagoras himself understands them. At no point does he try to drive a wedge between them or play off one against another. He accepts them as complementary expressions of a theory which he rejects and combats as a whole. (shrink)

Certain representations are bound in special ways to our sensory capacities; consider, for instance, pictures, sound recordings, and the various forms of mental sensory imagery. What do these representations have in common, and what makes them different from representations of other kinds? Dominic Gregory employs novel ideas on perceptual states and sensory perspectives to explain the special nature of the contents of distinctively sensory representations. The book contains extensive discussions of e.g. perceptual imagination, pictorial representation, and memories.

Introduction: the paradox of Socrates, by G. Vlastos.--Our knowledge of Socrates, by A. R. Lacey.--Socrates in the Clouds, by K. J. Dover.--Elenchus, by R. Robinson.--Elenchus: direct and indirect, by R. Robinson.--Socratic definition, by R. Robinson.--Elenctic definitions, by G. Nakhnikian.--Socrates on the definition of piety: Euthyphro 10A-11B, by S. M. Cohen.--Socrates at work on virtue and knowledge in Plato's Laches, by G. Santas.--Virtues in action, by M. F. Burnyeat.--The Socratic denial of Akrasia, by J. J. Walsh.--Plato's Protagoras and explanations of weakness, (...) by G. Santas.--Socrates on disobeying the law, by A. D. Woozley.--Plato's earlier theory of forms, by R. E. Allen.--Selected bibliography (p. 336-339). (shrink)

W. V. Quine was the most important naturalistic philosopher of the twentieth century and a major impetus for the recent resurgence of the view that empirical science is our best avenue to knowledge. His views, however, have not been well understood. Critics charge that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is circular and that it cannot be normative. Yet, such criticisms stem from a cluster of fundamental traditional assumptions regarding language, theory, and the knowing subject – the very presuppositions that Quine is at (...) pains to reject. Through investigation of Quine’s views regarding language, knowledge, and reality, the author offers a new interpretation of Quine’s naturalism. The naturalism/antinaturalism debate can be advanced only by acknowledging and critiquing the substantial theoretical commitments implicit in the traditional view. Gregory argues that the responses to the circularity and non-normativity objections do just that. His analysis further reveals that Quine’s departure from the tradition penetrates the conception of the knowing subject, and he thus offers a new and engaging defence of Quine’s naturalism. (shrink)

For more than 30 years, historians have rejected what they call the ‘warfare thesis’ – the idea that there is an inevitable conflict between religion and science – insisting that scientists and believers can live in harmony. This book disagrees. Taking as its starting point the most famous of all such conflicts, the Galileo affair, it argues that religious and scientific communities exhibit very different attitudes to knowledge. Scripturally based religions not only claim a source of knowledge distinct from human (...) reason. They are also bound by tradition, insist upon the certainty of their beliefs, and are resistant to radical criticism in ways in which the sciences are not. If traditionally minded believers perceive a clash between what their faith tells them and the findings of modern science, they may well do what the Church authorities did in Galileo’s time. They may attempt to close down the science, insisting that the authority of God’s word trumps that of any ‘merely human’ knowledge. Those of us who value science must take care to ensure this does not happen. (shrink)

A Kantian beginning : Georg Hermes -- A Catholic Hegel? Anton Günther -- The response of fideism : Louis Bautain -- Magisterial interventions : Gregory XVI and Pius IX -- Return to the schoolmen : Joseph Kleutgen and Leo XIII -- Embodying the Leonine project : Etienne Gilson -- The philosophy of action : Maurice Blondel -- The dispute over apologetics : from Blondel to Balthasar -- A synthetic outcome? John Paul II's letter Fides et ratio -- From (...) Cracow to Regensburg : Benedict XVI. (shrink)

Given its title, one might expect Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ITOE) to outline her positions on the issues normally covered in introductory courses and texts on epistemology. In particular, one might expect to find discussions of epistemic justification- i.e., "our right to the beliefs we have" (Dancy 2005, 263). Justification and the nature of knowledge are widely regarded as the essential subject matter of the field, and, as we will see, Rand effectively agrees with this consensus. 1 Yet (...) her monograph says little directly on these subjects. Rather, it is devoted entirely to the presentation of a theory of concepts. My subject in this essay is how a theory of concepts can be an introduction to an epistemology. More specifically, I will show how Rand's theory and the view of consciousness that it embodies relate to some concerns about justification that are familiar from the contemporary, analytic literature on epistemology. Though I will present some exegesis of Rand and some arguments in support of her positions and related theses of my own, this essay is not primarily exegetical or argumentative. My aim is, rather, to sketch the outlines of an epistemology in a way that brings out the relations between a seldom studied theory of concepts and some much debated questions about justification. I hope in doing so to shed light both on the theory and on the questions. I hope this paves the way for others to argue in greater detail for (or against) the theses I sketch here, and to do so in a way that engages more substantially with the analytic literature. In my view, the chief obstacle to work of this kind has been the lack of a big-picture account of the relation between the subject matter of ITOE and the central concern of analytic epistemology. This is the lack that I aim to remove. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher and Dan Hutto claim that those once bitter rivals, simulation theory and theory-theory, are now to be treated as partners in crime. It's true that the debate has become more nuanced, with detailed suggestions abroad as to how these two approaches might peaceably divide the field. And there is common ground between them, at least to the extent that they agree on what needs to be explained. But I see no fatal flaw in what they share. In particular, (...) I reject the idea that most interpersonal understanding can be accounted for without the postulation of mechanisms for inferring beliefs and desires. I also query the claim that simulation mechanisms have a very limited explanatory scope, and argue for the existence of such mechanisms at sub-personal levels. I suggest that Gallagher and Hutto's strictures against false belief tests are unwarranted, and their conclusions about the role of narrative in interpersonal understanding are unfounded. (shrink)

Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. In his later works, more specifically in his seminal 1930 essay “Qualitative Thought”, John Dewey questioned some of the traditional assumptions about the nature and function of the qualitative in inquiry. Dewey foresaw what recent scientific accounts of human thinking are confirming: it is more complex, less linear, more emotional, affective, bodily-based, non-reflective, non-linguistic, non-conscious than philosophers have assumed. Secondary (...) sources on Dewey have emphasized how, contrary to orthodoxy, inquiry is social, instrumental, and experimental, but for... (shrink)

The emergence of de‐extinction is a study in technological optimism. What has already been accomplished in recovering ancient genomes, recreating them, and reproducing animals with engineered genomes is amazing but also has a long ways to go to achieve “de‐extinction” as most people would understand that term. Still, with some caveats in place, creating a functional replacement for an extinct species may sometimes be doable, and given the right goals, might sometimes make sense. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (...) guidelines for de‐extinction do a reasonable job of keeping the caveats in place and clarifying the goals. In fact, given the right caveats about what de‐extinction can accomplish, we should pay a lot of attention to the technology and should think carefully about the goals. Not only has the technology been advancing, but our environmental standards have been getting looser and more flexible, providing less guidance for implementing the technology. The guiding ideals for conservation are often explained as a choice between John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club, and Gifford Pinchot, who helped create the U.S. Forest Service. Muir argued for preserving some places in the world in their natural state because of their great value and beauty. Pinchot, by contrast, was bluntly utilitarian. He argued for trying to keep some natural places more or less undamaged so that we could use them later. There has long been dissatisfaction with this choice, and in the last couple of decades, a number of prominent voices have proposed a “gardening ethic” as a new standard that combines elements of Muir and Pinchot. A gardening ethic is supposed to both celebrate the land and declare that it must now be managed. But what would good gardening mean when it comes to de‐extinction? (shrink)

Some of us have suggested that what fiction makers do is offer us things to imagine, that this is what is distinctive of fiction and what distinguishes it from narrative-based but assertive activities such as journalism or history. Some of us hold, further, that it is the maker's intention which confers fictional status. Many, I think, feel the intuitive appeal of this idea at the same time as they sense looming problems for any proposal about fiction's nature based straightforwardly on (...) the identification of fiction with the to-be-imagined. I formulate a very weak version of the proposal which is not vulnerable to some objections recently presented. My formulation is in terms of supervenience. But while this version is weak, it is also quite precise, and its precision brings into view certain other problems which have not so far been attended to. To the extent that these problems are serious, the prospects for an intentional theory of fiction look, I am sorry to say, poor; the version susceptible to the objections is weak, and anything weaker still but not so susceptible could hardly be thought of as a theory of fiction, though it might supplement such a theory. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I discuss what Leibniz meant by a miracle and why Leibniz’s definition of the best of all possible worlds implies that it is a world in which miracles are minimized. In the second part of the paper I argue that human happiness within the best of all possible worlds also requires, on Leibniz’s principles, that miracles must there be minimized. In the third section of the paper I consider what, if any, miracles actually (...) remain possible for Leibniz within the best of all possible worlds. In the final section I discuss one important kind of event upon which Leibniz vacillated whether it required miraculous intervention -- namely, the elevation of the sensitive soul to rationality -- and some speculation about the cause of this vacillation in Leibniz is offered. (shrink)

OPINION IS DIVIDED as to whether the "qualitative characters" or "qualia" of conscious sensory experiences such as color perceptions and pain sensations genuinely constitute a major obstacle to the success or tenability of contemporary physicalist theories of mind. Do the enormous complexities of human brain activity--conceived more or less as we now conceive it--alone suffice to account for our conscious sensory experiences, and thereby show how the experiences are nothing over and above the brain activities, or must there be some (...) further kind of thing, if we are to account for the existence of our kind of consciousness? This issue, representing perhaps the most profound division of opinion in contemporary philosophy of mind, cannot possibly reach a genuine resolution in the absence of a satisfactory answer to a question which has suffered astonishing neglect in the extensive debate on this issue: What exactly is the qualitative character of a conscious sensory experience? What exactly is it about color perception, for example, that makes it so distinctive in a "qualitative" respect, allegedly making trouble for contemporary theories of mind? (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics, I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this (...) understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement. (shrink)

This volume examines the diversity of new scientific theories of religion, by outlining the logical and causal relationships between these enterprises.